Personalised assessments

Purpose of personalised assessments

Personalised assessments are formative, helping learners progress through understanding:

what they can do
what they need to work on
their next steps

The assessments are taken online and assess each learner’s progress individually.

Questions are adaptive and are selected based on the learner’s response to the previous question. If a learner answers a question incorrectly, they will get an easier question. If a learner answers a question correctly, they will get a more challenging question.

This provides an individual assessment experience and tailors the level of challenge for every learner.

Teachers can use the information from the personalised assessments (including individual learner feedback and progress reports, as well as group reports) alongside what they know about their learners’ reading and numeracy from their work in the classroom. It will help them plan their learners’ next steps.

The information and resources on these pages are also available on the personalised assessments website, which school and regional staff can access.

Accessing personalised assessments

Head teachers, teachers and learners (in maintained schools in Wales) can access the Personalised Assessment website via their Hwb logins.

Head teachers decide which of their staff members have access to assessments and reports. The assessment site is not ordinarily available to individuals who do not appear on a school’s MIS.

Administration handbook

The Administration handbook sets out the arrangements for the National Reading and Numeracy Personalised Assessments to be taken by learners in Years 2 to 9 in maintained schools in Wales.

Refer to this guidance for information on:

timing of personalised assessments
access to personalised assessments
user management
scheduling and taking assessments
assessment feedback and reports
modifications and disapplication

User guide

The user guide sets out the processes for administering the personalised assessments which are taken by all learners in Years 2 to 9 in maintained schools in Wales.

Refer to the user guide for information on:

how the personalised assessments work
IT requirements and set up
conditions for administering assessments
personnel administering assessments
accessing and interpreting reports
accessing modified versions of assessments

The guide includes an annex on management of assessments for learners dual-registered in schools and PRUs.

Personalised assessments: user guide 2024 to 2025 pdf 4.39 Mb This file may not be accessible. If you need a more accessible version of this document please email digital@gov.wales. Please tell us the format you need. If you use assistive technology please tell us what this is

Guidance for practitioners on individual learner feedback and progress reports

The guidance for practitioners highlights some key points that may be helpful to support learning, teaching and progression planning. It also sets out which reports should be shared with parents and carers, and addresses any questions they may have.

‘How to’ videos

The following instructional videos give step-by-step guidance to school staff for each stage of scheduling and running the assessments and accessing reports.

‘How To’ videos: using the personalised assessments system and generating reports

Accessing reports and running queries

Learner feedback and progress reports are available the day after the assessment. Group reports are available to request. Individual learner feedback must be released by the teacher before a learner can view it.

Further information

Further documents and videos are available on our personalised assessments page :

Sample familiarisation assessments

Before learners take a personalised assessment, teachers should ensure that they have done a familiarisation assessment. This should be done either individually, as a class or in smaller groups, to see and try out the question types.

Familiarisation assessments can be accessed on the personalised assessment system and through the Training School for colleagues who do not have a school-based Hwb login (for example regional staff with a responsibility for literacy, numeracy or assessment and who have a role in supporting schools). They give a flavour of the various question types that learners will come across in their live assessment.

Sample questions

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